AI will be better consultants than humans.

Bull.

Why?

Because AI, I mean, it will continue to get more clever, but it doesn't have the emotion, empathy, context, backstory that a good advisor has about the people that they're consulting to.

And I appreciate the AI models are moving, but there's still that tech bro kind of false positive.

It's dopamine.

They're trying to hook you.

And how about we do this, we do that, there's five more options to your simple question that you us.

Hello and welcome to business without bs.

And today our guest is the wonderful Richard Francis.

Richard went from running consultancy services in the big accounting firms to building his own advisory practice to creating Spotlight Reporting, which is one of the world's leading reporting and forecasting tools for accountants.

He also built and sold a product to zero workbooks, grow a 50 person global SaaS team, and still finds times to chair schools, charities and an ethical coffee business.

Richard, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Andy.

I feel like a bit of a lie down hearing.

Well, starting to question my life choices already and we're one minute in.

I think all accounts question their life choices.

I think this is a common theme.

Did you, did you, did you choose to be an accountant?

Did you want to be an accountant?

No.

Oh golly no.

In fact, I come from a family of accountants, so my father was a Chartered Accountant for 60 years.

Can you believe my father too?

Yes, yes.

And my brother has been an accountant for a long time as well.

My wife's an accountant.

Because of course we can only kind of get together within the accounting firm, can't we?

Although there's HR rules around that now, so I kind of thought anything but accounting.

But when I came out of university in the kind of 90s, early 90s, there was a bit of a recession on and we just kind of sprayed our CV out there and the only taker I had was an accounting firm.

So which one did you start out?

It was a Haworth firm which became bdo.

Okay, so they were a big five in New Zealand in the day when there was a big five or a big seven or whatever the hell.

Yeah, yeah, they called themselves.

Yeah, so my first day on the job was blinking in shock and horror at being sat in a hessian lined cubicle with tax returns and being asked to account for six minute units.

Oh, exactly.

Isn't was really like landing from Mars.

But as you can tell from your intro, there's been a few gigs since then.

And you wonder too whether the young are even going to have to do the Grind.

We did.

Maybe we'll get into that in the world of AI later, but let's start.

So you basically made a leap from compliance to advisory.

What convinced you advisory is the future of accounting?

I wanted to do fun, life affirming work, Andy.

I mean, just picking up on the shock and awe of my first day and there were two of us graduates at this firm and my friend left at lunchtime and never came back.

So I, I still wonder whether she made the right choice or I did.

But anyway, yeah, I was sitting there having this existential crisis and I'm just glad I had it on day one because I thought, golly, this is not life affirming work.

I really want to do stuff that makes a difference.

I really want to have impact.

So I talk a lot about that now and I was talking about that yesterday at Accountex.

Of course we have to do the compliance and I'm not one of these.

Compliance is dead.

Of course we have to give our clients peace of mind and all of that, but I wanted to really move the dial.

I wanted to work with entrepreneurs, I wanted to see.

It'll sound corny and I apologize for that, but actually the impact on lives, personal goals being met.

So I was that kind of young, 20 odd, arrogant, wanting to change lives and lecture people on how they should run their business.

Dude, I earned the right over time and you know, through actually working with business owners to have the credibility, I suppose to, as David Meister says in his book Trusted Advisor, walk the corridors of your clients, businesses.

So actually accountancy for me became really interesting and life affirming because I was doing the Lord's work, AKA advisory.

It's a really interesting comment and I relate to it a lot.

I sometimes say to people it's a sort of maybe you're a square peg and a round hole, I. E. I never would have chosen accountancy.

Was kind of forced into it by the family business.

It was persuaded maybe I should say.

But yeah, you know, it struck, it struck me that like you, I'm interested in the entrepreneur.

Once I got in front of clients, it was actually an Aussie client.

I still remember Noel Duncan, big up.

No Duncan.

I still remember him ringing me, I'd done some work for him, ringing me up and go, oh, Andy, they're really cool.

Thank you enough.

You've really helped me out.

And it was like, it was such a moment, it was such a.

Like, I've helped him, you know, like, like I've helped him like a doctor.

Helped someone, you know, it's an adrenaline rush, isn't it, when you know you're, you're literally helping people create wealth for their future and their family.

You know, you get to meet the family and become.

It's a privilege too to be at that close.

In fact, we've been talking about this on the road show about the moral duty.

So we're getting quite heavy at times.

The moral duty actually is probably the only professional in the room because we all know that, you know, you have to be potentially in a dark place to go to your lawyer or anyone else.

You don't want one of those business coach types scuttling out from under a rock.

So you're, you know, you're a professional, you've got the.

Oh, you're saying you're sort of at the table before the crisis.

You're at the table, you've got the numbers.

And actually, and this is the epiphany I had as well when I was sitting there kind of thinking I'm not doing six minute units for the rest of my life, was we're actually in the business with these entrepreneurs and actually audit, which even accountants grimace at the thought of.

When I was doing audits and it got me out of the office, which was fantastic from my little hessian lung cubicle.

I was talking to these business owners and I was thinking, why are we ticking their invoices and whether they've got a paid stamp on them when they're actually sitting here asking for help and telling us about their challenges and opportunities and we're not doing anything about it.

So I went back to my firm and said, why aren't we.

Can't we beef up the audit report and actually put something useful in there?

But of course that breaks the rule, so we weren't allowed to do that.

And over time I wore the partners down and to their credit, they gave me the opportunity to create an advisory practice within.

So there was there.

You weren't really doing advisory then?

Or is it just the sort of what accountants can get a bit stuck in compliance.

They were doing the traditional ad hoc stuff.

Yeah.

Which of course is probably the worst way to do advisory because it's generally a crisis type moment and they're juggling 101 tax returns and deadlines and things like that.

But I also, you know, encouraged them to think of it more strategically.

And part of it was self serving.

I wanted a great job where I could run me, why not?

But there's money there.

There's money in helping businesses succeed.

Obviously, if they're more Profitable.

You're solving issues around legacy, succession growth, international expansion.

And Yuri Clark does a lot of that work, hence our relationship.

That's great for them and it's great for the bottom line.

So, interestingly, and this sounds very common to you, but once we had created an advisory offering and the partners actually bought a small book of consulting fees, we called it consulting in those days, which we doubled and then trebled in the subsequent two years, once they could see the money, the partners got more and more interesting, things changed.

But I did have one partner who I'm still in contact with.

He's done some work for Spotlight on the side.

Adam, who was a believer right from the start and let me as a young puppet kind of run hard with that.

And we worked on a lot of clients together who were traditional compliance clients of the firm, but they were thriving or challenged businesses with so many opportunities for projects, for strategy, for mentoring, for cash flow forecasting, for proper tax planning, succession planning, et cetera.

That.

Because, yeah, give it some context.

When you're talking about advisory, you're really, it's, it's.

Rather than the historical compliance, you're saying, well, we're here because we don't have an endless thing of weapons, do we?

As accounts we know about tax and stuff, we can't fix that.

We've got a few, we've got a few.

I mean, there's always the accountants on the team, bless them, and you'll have them too.

And I had them where, you know, you sit them out the back with a 20 watt light bulb and they do the accounts and you don't get them in front of anyone.

But we do have people who can be brought towards the light, where you hire four people who can have engagement.

And I was saying this at the Countex yesterday, it's about human engagement.

It really struck me as mad that the firm I was at, we had all these partners who, and most were kind of affable, you know, could hold a conversation, ask the right questions, buried with, you know, layers of tax returns and other and audit reports and things on their desk that they, you know, they couldn't leave before 8 or 9 o' clock at night.

And they weren't getting in front of clients other than the annual kind of death march towards the society.

So how do you fix that?

I mean, how do you get past that as a business that you've got, you know, piles of get rid of.

Clients, Andy, that was, that's my solution and I know have less clients.

I generally get gasps of horror from the audience.

Because as we know, the ideal client profile for most accounting firms is a heartbeat and wallet.

And I've been there too.

You know, we've all made the mistakes of taking on people we shouldn't.

But of course the biggest excuse.

And I have got a slide on my roadshow that's just all about ban excuses.

Cause we've heard them all.

We spend too much of our time as senior people, or even our practice overall, doing work for people that we don't really want to do the work for or who don't see any value in us or who just really are a grind because they pay us late.

They get all their shoebox of stuff in late.

All their assholes, I was gonna say.

And there's the assholes.

Yeah.

So when I was in my own practice, I did leave.

Came to the UK for a while, had a bit of fun, did some consulting work, tried to tell the public sector over here how to do things generally to kind of counsellors and people that were asleep as I was delivering my expensive report.

Went back, set up my own practice and we decided to be advisory led.

So 80, 20, 80, 20 Rule Pareto, 80% advisory.

And we knew we'd drag a tail of compliance with us, which we did.

So you would do all their compliance.

If they asked us.

Okay, so you wouldn't even necessarily do it.

You would say, give me the numbers,.

Let me help you do that.

So yeah, yeah, it was all about scaling.

The stuff that I wanted to get out of bed in the morning doing and that the people I was hiring or partnering with wanted to do when they rolled out of bed.

And this is maybe the gem of spotlighting.

You wanted better information to help you advise.

So it's better information.

It's asking the personal alongside the business and financial questions.

So a very simple kind of approach I had, Andy, that I think all accountants should do and I've been telling them for a long time, and some do and some don't, is the Venn diagram of what are the three business goals, what are the three financial goals and what are the three personal goals for that business, client or family group you've got in front of you.

And we used to do uncomfortable things like invite the wife or invite the husband, depending on who was the alpha to the meeting to get the good oil really on what we should be helping them with.

That would be illuminating, isn't it?

I mean, I do similar things.

It's like, you know what?

Well, they have to, you know, if we're doing people's wills and stuff.

But it's like, well, what does your wife think?

What does your husband think?

Well, we had.

I'll share a couple of examples and why it's so powerful.

So we had a really strong business owner making lots of money, wanted to grow offshore, et cetera.

And through the context he'd given us, there was a certain advice stream we were going down, and we started to talk personal stuff, and he looked a bit uncomfortable.

We asked him to bring the wife along, looked more uncomfortable, and he did.

And the business owner, who we thought we knew really, really well, had had a heart attack three weeks before, hadn't told us, came to our meeting almost fresh from hospital.

Yeah, yeah, I want to grow.

I want to make models.

And then she was going, he's dying.

He's not seeing his kids.

I want him around.

We need to be.

She still had her eye on the dollar.

She said, we need to be more profitable.

But it's actually not about growth.

It's not about extra staff.

You know, he's dying of stress.

So that's one extreme example.

But of course, we had all sorts of other things that came out of the woodwork just by extending our remit to asking better questions and widening the scope of the discussions from the numbers.

In fact, I was criticizing someone the other day who was going on about.

And they're right, but we're the numbers mentor in a way.

But I said, it's much more than the numbers.

It has to be if we're gonna provide the correct advice.

That's really gonna change lives.

And the win, win there is.

If you're positioning that and they're talking to you honestly, sharing all of their hopes and dreams, you don't need to sell.

No, you don't.

They're just telling you and you're going,.

Well, you care about them too.

We can do that.

You just want to help them.

Yeah, but what you're talking about is the complete picture, which I think a lot of people would argue, you know, this is where we lay.

I struggle, whatever, we can go down that rabbit hole.

But it's exactly as you say.

I mean, I think of examples in my career.

You get someone coming in, they come in and they go, I've got this VAT problem.

And it's like, I want to answer this VAT problem.

And then you're trying to talk to him.

And I remember that meeting because he was like, he had a 50, 50 shareholding with this business partner he'd fallen out with.

And I was like.

I was like, Forget about the VAT problem.

You need to deal with that.

Your business is this guy you fought.

Oh, no, forget about that.

I just want to, it's like you're building on where are we going?

You know, and actually in that, that was one of those conversations.

He didn't actually want to deal with the other ETH in the room.

But, you know, it's that, it's that kind of thing.

And of course we're great at reacting, aren't we?

So we, we will.

And most accountants would have reacted to, and sorted the VAT problem, but the business would have fallen over anyway and there would be suits and all of that.

So we've got, I believe we've got a moral imperative to ask better questions and position ourselves as someone.

And if it's not our skill set, we can refer to a trusted partner.

So when I started my imaginatively titled Francis Consulting practice and notice no CA in there, we didn't even, didn't even pitch the chartered accounting angle.

And there's a strange tangent.

They obviously worked out we were accountants.

I don't know whether it was how I dress or whatever, but we got the cut of your chair.

Exactly.

We got the compliance anyway.

But it was really just positioning in that way that we were getting people who were coming to us with bigger problems than their numbers or their VAT or their GST or.

And if we're not going to do that work, who else are they going to talk to?

Because of course, business owners can't always leave their family.

They don't want to put that strict.

It's very lonely.

I mean, we've run accounting practices.

It's actually quite lonely when you've got a team and partners, let alone being a struggling SMB.

And look everywhere around the world, they're struggling at the moment.

You say SMB, small or medium business, you say, I'll say, yeah, we say SME.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I, I.

New Zealand tends to say SME, but I've been overexposed to Americans and they have a very SMB.

Oh, bloody enough to follow them.

Yeah.

So they will say to me, you mean SMB, don't you?

So let's talk a little bit about Spotlight.

So you built this, you know, legendary business, you know, one of the leading in reporting.

I mean, if you're not familiar with it, you know, do check it out, but, you know, it's an ability of sort of getting better information from the, from the raw data, I guess.

I don't know how you describe it, Richard, but how did you Decide what Spotlight needed to do first.

Yeah, this comes back to Impact.

So I was one of those slightly strange fish who read the books back in the day that, you know, good to great and those kind of things.

Oh, the business books.

Oh, yes.

I don't touch them now.

Life's short.

But back then when I was keen.

As a bean, he always seemed to have one great point spread over 300 pages.

Now there's these wonderful apps, we just get it all in kind of one minute.

Tell me what they actually mean by a four hour week.

You know, how did that work out for anyone?

But anyway, good to great.

So I had a bit of a mantra.

We had.

We had a why statement.

So this kind of Simon Sinek stuff that came later about better conversations, bigger impact, better lives.

So it sounds very.

Accountants.

I was sharing this on my roadshow in the UK and some people got it and liked it.

Accountants do shift slightly uncomfortably in their seat when you talk about your why or your passion because we're not known as the most passionate people at times.

But that was really, really important.

And the point I'm making there is if you say that and you publicize that to your team or your clients, you've got to live up to it.

You can't just do tax returns.

So.

We were doing that, we were having impact.

And I suppose my goal when I ended up in accounting was, how do I make impact?

I'm not gonna do it with tax returns.

I'm not passionate about that, but I'm passionate about helping people fulfill their dreams and their goals.

Then set up my own practice.

Was doing that.

And then I thought, that's great, I'm helping Wellington entrepreneurs.

How can I have a bigger impact?

What can I do?

I'm not going to be Winston Churchill or Mahatma Gandhi, but what can I do in our industry that is more impactful?

And as I was musing on this, the serendipity.

So the universe was smiling at me because I got rid of my Dirty Dozen clients that I mentioned earlier.

You've got to get rid of clients to free up.

Get rid of clients.

Oh, man.

It's coming up with reasons as well.

Yeah, Yeah.

I got rid of a dozen in one go.

And I thought, what am I doing?

What's I'm turning into a traditional accounting firm.

And of course, what had happened was my really good clients, my A's had invited their bees and see friends and crazy uncles and, you know, second cousin up the road who had a hairdressing.

And you said yes to everyone.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah, come on.

Heartbeat and Wallet.

Yeah, I suppose I could take them.

And there's a little bit of ego always, isn't there?

Yes.

And it was just a big mistake.

So we got rid of six figures.

Yeah, there's pot Noodles for a year.

We upset one or two people.

But where I'm going with the story is the firm that I passed some of these dirty dozen over to was run by Hamish and Doug Edwards.

And Hamish Edwards was the co founder of Xero with Rod Jury and he was telling me about this online cloud accounting system.

And I thought, great, because we were on, I won't name them, a desktop.

Once a year you got a disk you had to put in your computer for the update.

British.

It wasn't actually.

And it was generally rife with bugs.

So I thought, wow, brave new world, let's jump in.

So we were.

There's still a debate and I'm wrestled every zerocorn as to who was the first zero accounting firm in the world, but I'm claiming it.

So we jumped on to the cloud, which aligned really well with us, trying to be innovative as a small bespoke firm.

But I could also see the gap.

And we were doing lots of Excel sheets and pivot tables and things, trying to get a Spotlight report or a Spotlight forecast done.

So with cloud software, I just thought, here's an opportunity, because whether it's Sage 50 or Xero or QuickBooks, none of them really did decent cash flow forecasting, decent visualization, decent consolidation.

They didn't in early zero was very basic.

Well, even now, which is why we're still in business.

It's pretty ropey.

Yeah.

So we built all of the stuff that they don't do, benchmarking.

But you met them, they co founded, founded this little business.

It must have been in its infancy to then go into technology as a bit of a step.

Yeah, well, we were one of only five software companies at the first Zero Con in Taupo, New Zealand, of all places.

And it was a bit of a leap.

We still had our accounting practice, but it was interesting.

We basically had to exit that and sell it off because we were starting to steal clients from our subscribers.

Oh, you exited the advisory business?

No.

Yeah.

So we, when we started Spotlight, we signed up KPMG and PwC and we had, you know, we got some really good names really quickly and we've still.

And you built it just with engineers in, in New Zealand?

Yeah, yeah.

Hired some pointy headed people and, and, and, and showed them what I wanted and stepped through all the different, all the apps.

We built a work papers app as well as, as you know, which we did sell to zero.

So yeah, and we started to kind of get their customers still wanting to come to us for the advisory.

Sorry, siblings, a little bit of a conflict here.

We better just go full out into the software world.

But you were passionate about advisory and now you're building a technology company.

Yeah, but I'm, I'm helping.

So I'm now helping a thousand accounting firms globally do advisory.

Right.

So you asked kind of what are we?

And we always get, I suppose, introduced as a reporting forecast and consolidation tool.

We're kind of the power tools of advisory.

So if you think of all the general ledgers they help you do.

Xero is well designed and it's online and that's nice.

But when the top half of your clients need to go to the bank to raise a million quid or you're doing a succession plan, or you need to do scenario planning or they've got offshore entities, you've got to consolidate, you've got to do cash flow forecasting, you want to have action plans embedded in there.

So we've got an AI action plan now where from your amazing advice, Andy, you can push a button and it will create an action plan with the steps that AI is suggesting that you should do.

Obviously you check them and edit them with your experience and expertise, which you can then hold the client accountable to.

It's bonkers the speed of this change though, isn't it?

Yeah, it's really exciting for us.

I mean, I'm not a believer in the cesspocalypse, of course, but if, if you just keep doing what you're doing now, you will get eaten.

Yeah.

So we're embedding AI augmentation across all of our apps, our ESG reporting tool, which unfortunately we've timed for the zeitgeist not really being.

Yeah, yeah, I can't even mention it.

Well, we launched our sustainability reporting team here just as it all happened.

You know, they did all right for private equity, but y. Oh, it'll come back.

It's a slide I don't use in the States.

Yeah, I don't want to end up in Prison.

But, but anyway so that's, that's very AI driven because there's a lack of data.

So we drag in benchmarks, reports the standards and do an ESG strategy.

When I say we obviously the advisor using that to start.

Were you listening to other accountants and what problems they had at the time?

Yeah, yeah, we do that all the time.

So on this trip as an example at our road shows and Accountex we're probably at a couple of hundred accounting firms and I go out and visit them as well and my team do.

So what they've said to us is we want to be able to play with your tool set in AI.

So we've already got accounting firms who might do a spotlight forecast for the bank and the board, but they'll throw it in Claude and say can you add this?

Actually I don't like that chart.

Can you reconfigure it in this way?

So in Claude design.

So there's lots of AI optionality where you can bring the best of trusted road tested ISO certified SaaS with the slightly wild west but very exciting world of AI.

Yeah, I see that too.

Because you need it to.

Whatever you do will make up stuff if it feels as a gap or it'll put something in below.

Initial play with AI we've and we were about to roll out our V2 of a lot of this stuff where we've just kind of relaxed the guardrails but was very tightly guardrailed.

We double checked it back to our all of our mapped accounts and making sure that everything was correct before we let AI suggest stuff now and as you know the models are moving so fast now.

We kind of using the latest versions and we're able to test the accuracy and the I suppose the sanity almost of what it's suggesting to you.

We're able to kind of relax that and get more in.

And so for us, if you think of how software is deployed, we not only allow you to ingest the data from multiple sources with our automation, the SAS automation, a lot of the heavy lifting is already done.

We then you can add as much or as little AI as you want.

Push of a button, action plan, spools.

Yeah but you need that core that it's going back to the figures that everything can, you can't be standing in front of the board and it's like, well where'd you get that?

Two million frogs.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's like.

But some are trying, some are going right, you know, I'm just going to throw everything in anthropic and see where it goes.

See where it goes.

Claude is impressive.

I mean I've moved across over the last month or two and I'm like from Chat gbt, which I sort of, I describe as like, you know, it's like a over enthusiastic 19 year old who won't shut up and wants to stay up.

The annoying knowledgeable friend, isn't it?

Right half the time.

Whereas Claude feels like somebody who's had one kid and is probably in their late 20s and like, you know, tells me to go back to my family when I'm starting to pour out my heart to it, it's like, you know, I think you should go and chat.

Even Claude is still that cognitive bias which it's trying to big you up, isn't it?

Trying to say, yeah, well that's genius, Andy, why don't you, you know, what.

Would you say to an SME then out of all of this experience, what should they look for in their accounting firm of today?

Yeah, I think I would be looking for Differentia.

So if your accounting firm, if the website and the service offerings and the person set across from you is just asking you about and offering compliance, that's fine.

If that's all you want, if that's all you want to invest in, if you're not invested in exiting your business at the highest value, improving your profit, hiring in the best way, having the best systems, having a strategy, having goals, that's fine.

If you want compliance, you can find the accountants who can do more.

Ask around, don't just believe the website necessarily.

Ask around and find out.

Because often, you know, it's not an arm and a leg necessarily in terms of additional fees.

It can be, but it can be tremendous roi.

And when we offered these services, we had the stickiest clients imaginable other than the ones we exited.

We didn't lose clients.

And in fact, I suppose the affirmation of our approach was that many of the clients I had who exited successfully are shareholders in Spotlight and annoyingly for me, they now hold me to account.

That is irritating, isn't it?

Yeah, that is.

There's a table and is visualization, is this a really important part of Spotlight?

Oh, it's one part I think a lot of thought went into.

I mean there's the standard charts, you'd expect revenue this year versus last year, but we did KPI planets and balance sheet donut where green was assets, good stuff, orange was liabilities, not so good stuff and you wanted to see the balance.

So there's a lot of Thought kind of going into what is the aha moment for the customer.

KPI planets.

Did you say KPI Planet with the goals.

All kind of outline action plans.

So.

Action plans it sounds, you know, what's the big deal there?

But what I've said to accountants ad nauseam and particularly with our AI one which is a push of a button if you can embed yourself as the person that that SME owner feels accountable to and some of the actions will be yours, some will be theirs.

You're.

You're locked in.

You know that's the two monthly mentoring, the quarterly.

Quarterly mentoring.

And it's quite, quite useful to take them along the path as well because sometimes that's the tricky bit.

You're, you're.

You might advise or something and you know in your head there's a lot of steps to this.

You have going to.

And it's going to take longer than they think and it's going to cost more money than they think and we're going to get two months in and they're going to say why am I doing this?

That's the steps.

And things are.

And yeah, why are you doing that, Andrew?

And that comes back to that business personal financial goals.

Yeah but you've got to get momentum and it won't be for everyone.

And I think you've got to realize when, when you're wasting your time and they're wasting their money.

I had clients like that where it was actually better just to do compliance with them.

But the ones who are passionate and driven by their goals and that you're able to coach.

It's when they also.

Well not empower you but give you the space.

Like some of my cleverest clients.

But they can be like they want to do it all themselves or they sort of get amongst it.

It's almost like the clients that are best almost you take someone in the creative industries and they're.

I just want you to do all of that Andrew.

And I'll do my bit.

But then they're not like.

But I don't want to know about it.

I'm going to stick with their like yeah but talk to me about it, you know and then it's much.

You get that because as we both know, I mean and I give this advice to anyone to an extent.

If you're going to hire advisor or whatever, you know, let them get on with it.

Don't try and sort of pick it apart all the time or double because it costs a fortune that it's exhausting for us.

We end up trying to teach you our job.

You know the trusted words key.

I think there's got to be that two way trust and it's even heightened now with AI because every SME in the UK has the phone in the pocket which has Claude or ChatGPT on.

There challenging everything you're trying to do.

Well almost every accountant in the room when we were saying who's had a client come to them and said ChatGPT says and pretty much every hand went up.

So we've got to get ahead of that.

We've got to be the trusted relationship where they go actually I'm going to ring Andy about that.

I might check on check GPT or Gemini, whatever it happens to be or I might form a bit of a semi baseless context.

Well I was joking.

We used to write reports, now I'm getting sent reports.

You know is this is bizarre sort of world we're living but I had a hilarious example with a client where I was doing something on share options or something which is a notoriously complicated area.

Wrote him a quick email, blah blah blah.

I got this bloody great email back with all these technical.

Well he's obviously gone to AI.

There's no way even understands I had to answer those questions.

Then he sends me another one.

I'm having to employ AI to just to the volume of these sort of technical and I'm thinking.

And then he replies eventually I mean you know, he's hilarious but he replies oh I don't have time to read this email, you know and I was like it was just such a classic.

I was like you know we know each other so I was like yes.

Should you and me just have a.

Chat and like and you put your phone away?

Yeah, yeah.

Because of course the business owner doesn't ask the right question in the first place.

It doesn't provide context.

True.

And even Claude I, I take your point about it it being a little bit less happy clappy than perhaps GPT but they, they are still built to essentially encourage you along and ask more questions.

User tokens.

Thank you very much.

We're all going to get really large.

Well when's the price going up?

It must be going to shoot up.

Well we've got co pilot and Claude and Gemini's kind of rolled in as part of our Google stuff.

Some of us use chat GPT as well and it's going to take a significant investment once they start actually charging what the data centers are genuinely chewing through.

But yeah, so I think if I was in the accounting profession running an accounting practice.

Now I would be thinking, how do I embed the human element, my experience and expertise and the trust I have with my best clients as my moat.

Because all the other stuff is going to be under attack now.

There's still going to be lots of SMEs who just are going to want you to do the tax return anyway because they're not going to, they don't want to have to do it in AI or any of that kind of stuff.

But stuff that was number crunching, spreadsheet y type stuff is under attack.

And actually I was with a partner of a big firm in Australia a few weeks ago and he had a lot as Big four, they had a lot of expensive graduates sitting in this beautiful tower.

So they always have.

And they were crunching high net worth stuff for their valuable clients.

And he admitted to me that they used to take days and charge an arm and a leg, of course, and it was now down to hours.

And he said it would be minutes soon.

And I said, what's that going to do to your fee base?

Because they're going to realize that.

And of course they can get away a little bit with the logo and all that.

But one of the reasons he was meeting me was they weren't doing advisory really because they had so much money tied up and crunching spreadsheets and he realized they wouldn't be able to charge their exorbitant.

We did all those spreadsheets.

They might not have to do flow forecasts instead or do, you know, mentoring sessions or actually talk to their high net worth clients about goals and other things.

That's a nice bit.

My, my, you know, is, I think, you know, I work with my old man still.

He's 8, he's 84 now.

God doesn't know.

He was just his birthday last week.

Yeah, well, you know, if we tell each other what to do, which is hilarious because he doesn't listen to me and I don't know, listen here.

But no, no, no, I mean we're very close.

But you know, he was just making the Aegis argument, was saying, oh well dad, you know, whatever.

But then I was thinking, I sort of got a point.

Really.

Obviously he's just making the point.

Like we're having another one of those moments where things are moving really quickly.

Like the Internet came along.

Yes.

And if you're not online and you were a granny, I mean, honestly, I, I'm sure you have this every day.

I get stuck and on technology and I'm all right with technology and I have to do some.

Yesterday we were doing some code thing that couldn't work and we had about four of us gather.

I think what does my mum.

Do they even survive?

Like understand.

I understand a little bit how it's plugged together and stuff and can sort of, you know, go and Claud it.

And he's just saying this is thing happening again now this sort of AI is coming in and he's using AI and stuff.

But there's a level of they've lived.

Through so much change, haven't they?

But my father, who's no longer with us, he would sit at his computer once he got over the fact that, you know, the online banking didn't mean that necessarily at all.

We kind of sucked out to Albania or somewhere.

Yeah, he was actually all in.

But it is tough and I think even I've got a few more gray hairs than you.

But I was talking about when I started in the profession, we had journal books and I would hand it to the lady who had journal books for documentary.

Yeah, yeah.

And would hand it to the lady who had the computer in the team to enter the journals.

She worked at night because she hated us, she hated humans.

She would work overnight and if there was a problem with the journal, you'd have to give it to her that night.

And eventually we got computers, then we got the Internet, then cloud came along.

All these things are kind of future shock moments.

And what's interesting about AI is it's another feature shock moment.

The difference though, because we all kind of thought accountants would be swept away with computers then, swept away by the Internet and cloud.

AI will be a great enabler for the smart and the fast moving and the ones who realize that the value is actually in what humans have and how they deploy AI and good SAS tools.

The ones who are crunching low end stuff, yeah, they're a bit stuff.

Some of them will survive.

But even the icaew, et cetera, are saying the fee compression is going to start to hit and we're going to get more and more people.

But that core of advisory, it's that sort of core of what you're talking about, of two humans sitting opposite each other, you know, really.

That will survive.

That will survive.

There was a whole panel of people at the Countex yesterday and I know a couple of them slightly vested interest because they run AI native companies.

They were saying we're all gone in two years, which I don't believe.

I mean, we've all heard that before and I don't believe that at all.

But there will be people in our industry who can't get jobs like they used to.

There'll be bookkeeper, y type people who I think will be under a lot of pressure.

Well, this is sort of irony in what you're saying.

You're not a usual accountant.

There's a sort of irony that the people that you would describe as, oh, that's an accountant, he's sort of a bit boring, or she, you know, likes that, that's going to disappear.

You want the dynamic people, the communicators, the people who can think, you know, and have ideas, or the people who can frankly sit in front of a husband and wife, know how to manage that conversation.

That's a very delicate conversation.

It is.

That's problem.

So this comes back to kind of, you know, we were talking earlier about how things changing, you know, who we hire and how we train them.

There'll be the technical side still and there always has been, but there will be the communication angle.

How do you manage those conversations?

How do you ask the right questions?

What templates or processes do you use?

And I think one of the mistakes a lot of accounting firms make, and I've seen this over the 15 years of running Spotlight, is they try and bolt on just a little bit of advisory, but they don't get rid of the clients.

They don't have the cognitive discipline to actually do that properly.

And therefore it tends to stay as a bit of a sideline for maybe the partners who have the confidence and the charisma and all of that to have those conversations and come up with ideas and be creative.

But it doesn't scale in the way that.

Oh, and you think it should scale across the business?

Well, not everyone.

So not everyone needs to be an advisor at all.

It will, you know, we're not going to get Holly Hairdresser and Colin Cafe wanting strategic plans and forecasts and succession, unless they've got 10 hairdressing salons and 10 cafes.

So it's definitely a top half of the pyramid debate, but there is definitely gold in them nar hills.

But it's also a moat against all of the technological disruption and changes.

Well, you made a great point there, because this comes up all the time.

You know, you meet some friend and then you're in the pub and then they say, oh, you're an accountant.

Oh, can I ask you about.

And as you say, a little sole trader with a, you know, whatever, and you're like, there's not much you can do.

I mean, you're probably, you know, Give you two comments.

But yeah, it is what it is.

And then there's this attitude of like, oh yeah, where the rich don't pay tax and they've got all these big complicated things and these advisors and it's like, well, there's a little bit of truth in the fact if you've got a more complicated machine, there's probably more things you could do.

But it's almost.

There are.

If something's producing money and you've got kids and family, this is just a more complicated puzzle to plan for the future as opposed to we all run away from tax.

Well, even with, you know, advisory is a broad church.

It's anything that adds value beyond the must have.

So as you know, someone put their hand up at one of the roadshow events and said, what about tax planning?

I do proactive tax planning.

I said, of course that's advisory.

Yeah.

If you're just doing the tax return, that's compliance.

If you're planning for your rich client to, you know, pay less tax or if they have things in the right place, that's advisory.

But if you're doing that, why wouldn't you be setting the goals for the business with them?

Finding out what his plan was around succession or growth or had he had that.

And you always have to update these plans book you were.

Exactly.

And you have to update these plans because the tax changes, I mean, obviously there's a big change yesterday in Australia, everyone's freaking out about.

Yeah.

So you do an action plan, preferably in an awesome tool, a spotlight forecasting or reporting and hold them to account and then you meet with them every two months or whatever it happens to be.

I was a monthly person and when I ran my practice.

You would meet all of your clients every month, would you?

Well, the ones I liked, there's some that were on two monthly or quarterly pretty quickly.

But no.

When I set up my practice again, it was I wanted to be advisory led.

So I just said this is what you get if you join my practice.

If you only want your tax returns on financial, financial statements done, that's fine.

I've got an accountant down the road and I did literally who only wants to do that work.

So I had a partnership and he basically, if anyone asked for scary things like mentoring or strategy or he would refer them to me.

Yeah, I always find that so funny when you get there.

Yeah, it's like, oh, they asked for sort of advice, you know, can you help them?

It's like, why don't you know, it's like oh, he's asked me about R D. I don't do R and D. And I'm like, why not?

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

Not everyone's cut that way.

And, you know, there's so many people in the profession who are in the profession because they like crunching numbers.

They like to be accurate, too.

They want to be perfect.

And the moment you want to get everything perfect.

That's.

Wow, that's.

That's a really good question and a really good point because we were.

We've talked about that quite a number of times at events and things that often the accountant themselves lacks the confidence to kind of really make the sleep.

But they're wasting hours on that last penny.

Penny or getting everything 100% right.

And the customer, frankly, doesn't care.

As long as it's compliant, tick, it's filed on time, it's within.

They're willing to take risks.

These options.

I gave the example of someone who was doing consolidation for their client.

We made it a matter of hours rather than days for him to do everything right.

And this accountant could not get his head around that.

We had a five pound as a British accountant, Swedish rounding balance, on the balance sheet because of exchange rate stuff and, you know, who cares?

And he wouldn't deploy it.

I said, well, I'm just going to go back to spreadsheets because I can get it to the pound.

And I said, does your client care?

And you're going to have an action plan.

You're going to sit down and go through it.

It's visual.

They're going to understand it for the first time.

But he could not get over.

And it's this OCD thing that.

Yeah, half of our profession.

Yeah, yeah, the oc.

Five quid.

I offered to get.

Send them five quid.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Be done with it.

Yeah.

And also, you're not.

To me, the entrepreneurs are risk takers.

We lose that sight of that a lot of the time that, you know, they get stuck internally.

I'm not.

I find out about it, I ring up the client and say, what was this all about?

Oh, that.

It's like, all right, done.

You know, we'll take a risk.

The value they see is peace of mind for all of that stuff.

Yes.

They don't want to get a parking ticket, basically.

They don't.

No.

I mean, I.

When I was in.

In the profession at this big firm that we've talked about, I remember having a 50 cent kind of issue with one of my sets of accounts and the senior accountant in my team Made me redo and check everything and rerun the account.

People would make the argument going to pay for that.

No, but people would argue.

If it doesn't reconcile.

Exactly, then you don't, you don't know anything.

So there is that aspect, but then there's just the practical aspect, isn't it?

Well, it's hilarious.

Listening to accountants and keeping in mind I am one debating this and then non accountants sitting there thinking, what planet are you guys on?

Yeah, file my tax return if it's five, you know, if there's a five quid loan, you know, just, just do it.

And actually, I want to talk about that new store I want to open on.

Yes, from setting up a business in the UK or Australia or what else do you think?

You know, why do so many firms buy tools but never change behavior, as it were?

It's ingrained.

We've had, you know, 400 years as a profession, haven't we?

Well, actually longer.

But they're Venetians, I guess.

Yeah, the Venetian chap whose name escapes me.

I'm sure they were doing accounting in ancient Greece and Rome.

But anyway, so unlearning behaviors is really hard.

And a lot of the businesses we deal with at Spotlight who buy our software, they've often spun out of KPMG or PwC or whatever their backstory is.

And most of them will admit that they kind of had to unlearn that approach they had because it might have worked.

If you've got a big logo next to your name, but actually you've got to be closer to your client.

You know, you're not going to be able to charge 100 grand for a report with a logo on it.

You know, SMEs really need the personal touch and that.

That led them to realize they needed to talk differently, ask different questions, pitch their businesses, their accounting businesses differently to attract the clients that would pay higher.

Change.

I mean, what stops the.

I think about my kitchen cabinets and my wife moved where the plates were and I still go to the wrong cupboard every time.

And I'm just like, why did you meet?

What.

You know, it's like your brain is so wired up like that.

You know, what do you think?

What do you think stops.

You know, what stops adoption cold.

How can we.

How do you break that?

Well, well, if I, if I think of my ban.

Excuses slide so that there's this cognitive kind of.

This is how we've always done it.

There's the fear slash Scottish Presbyterian attitude around getting rid of clients.

You know, the short arms, long pockets, why would I get rid of fees?

They're the wrong fees.

They're low fiber fees.

Your clients hate those.

Sorry?

Your staff hate those clients.

They don't pay you.

You chase them.

They send you kind of, they shut the world invoices and receipts and things.

Expect the world call you late at night.

Why?

Why are we one of the few professions who let a significant cohort of our client base?

Well, my wife has it much worse in the medical industry.

Who says she was in the nhs?

Can't say.

You know, check anyone?

Yeah, but we don't.

But do we say no?

No, not really.

No.

You know when I ask, so difficult.

Who, who, who's got a heartbeat in the wallet?

Ideal client profile.

Anyone puts a hand up, I mean, I was the most excited I got on this road show was actually a young chap who's starting his, his business.

He's going quite well.

But he said the services I want to provide are the ones you've been talking about.

But I've got all these clients who've come to me or been referred to me and he said, I'm going to go back and get rid of a Dirty Dozen.

So I said, do it with dignity.

Stage it, think it through.

Yeah, how do you do?

What is your approach to getting rhythm?

You can't just say, I don't want to work for you anymore.

Oh, you mentioned the A word.

So the assholes, slow payers.

But what do you say to them?

You just say, oh, sorry.

Well, how do you do that?

It was really this.

We're not really aligned with, you know, what our business is trying to do.

This is how we frame things up.

Some really good accountants in my network,.

You find them a referral.

Yeah.

So we were, we, we found them a safe home with a good accounting firm who was a bit more heartbeat.

And expecting something back maybe.

No, not really bothered.

Told me about Zero, which was good.

Yeah.

Life changing actually.

Funny that the firm you found that was quite steady.

Eddie was also with the co founder of Zero.

Yeah, well, he was very and is still very entrepreneurial.

It was his dad's practice.

He was a traditional accountant.

Lovely, lovely guy.

Really good practice.

So I knew it was a safe harbor and you know, so I think that's important you don't just kind of sack them.

So I make it sound more mercenary when I talk about the Dirty Dozen because some of them were, you know, good people or good businesses, but they just weren't really aligned with us for the reasons I've outlined.

And that freed up the Space for us to do the work we wanted to do for the people we wanted to do it for.

And shouldn't we be in business to do that?

And then if you've got the space, then you can hopefully change your habits.

Because a lot of the inability to change habits.

I mean, a member of piece of software we bought in a couple of years ago and then six months later, I said to my dick when I was like, why the hell aren't we using.

He's like, I'm too busy.

You know, I'm just.

Everyone is urgent.

And I was like.

I was like.

I was like, right, that's it.

Every single one goes through this software now, end of.

And you know, because it'll be quicker, but you've just got to get it on there.

I had a husband and wife team, one of the events who said, made the mistake of saying to me, but I'm too busy.

We've got all this compliance.

And I said, have you ever got rid of a client?

No.

I said, why not?

Have you got rogue clients that you almost weep when the phone goes and it's them?

Yes.

Do you have ones that the staff members don't like that, you know.

Yeah, of course they do.

But we're nice people, aren't we?

I think there is almost that general practitioner element.

Professionals.

We're professionals.

We're professional.

We want to care.

We don't, you know, oh, getting rid of people, that's hard.

But it was the best thing I ever did.

Yeah.

And you can use.

You know, my old rule is I'll put up with an.

But they better pay their bill by return.

That's like, well, you know, or.

And then the nice guy.

Okay, you know, I'll be a bit more chilled out about, you know, but make a good point that you should.

We should all take stock in our lives.

Whatever business you're in.

It's that sort of what's.

What's.

What's taking up the noise.

You could apply it to your personal life.

You could probably say, look at your friendships, because you can look at that and do the same thing.

And you got, as my mother loves to say, Hoover's radiator styling.

You know, it's so true.

You've got people who suck your energy and people who pump it out.

And as we get older, you'll be better at this.

To me.

Well, I was waking up getting stressed about filing statistics and deadlines and how we were ever going to get all those tax returns and things.

And in time, in my, in my advisory Practice.

And I thought that's wrong.

That was kind of my tipping point when I realized I'd said yes too much.

So you've got to look at the people you're trying to help and then you've got to look about how you're doing it.

It's the same sort of point of view.

It was an advisory client checklist.

We had to go through the steps to decide whether we would accept them or not and whether they would accept the service offerings that we had.

And you had to have a strategic plan, you had to have mentoring with me.

And that's not for everyone.

No.

You're an acquired taste.

Yes.

So let's talk about, I mean you've built several businesses successfully.

You still, you still run one.

You know, you're a seasoned entrepreneur.

I mean, you, you sold work papers to zero.

You know, a product that, you know,.

I've seen me a nice beach house up the coast.

So you say, bought me a nice beach house up the coast.

Excellent news.

I mean, what, what made workplaces valuable enough and why sell it, you know?

Yeah, well, I sometimes wonder whether I should have, to be honest.

Although I was crafty enough to get 0 shares out of it.

So when I kind of sat down to work out what Spotlight was going to be, it was like, what are the power tools that will, that will empower accountants to become advisors?

Because the missing link here is, okay, I'm going to offer these services, how do I deploy, you know, multi currency consolidation or cash flow forecast with different scenarios, et cetera.

And obviously the General Ledger software couldn't do that.

So reporting, you know, let's visualize reporting so people understand it, forecasting for all of that future focused stuff.

Because shouldn't we be talking about the future, not the past?

You know, let's do less archaeology and more direction finding and then the consolidation piece, et cetera.

So workpapers was kind of a little bit more of a compliance thing.

But what we saw was Xero and all these other apps.

General Ledger apps didn't really scratch the itch other than General Ledger for the accounting firm.

So they were making compliance sexier.

I think Xero even had a tag phrase, something like better accounting or people.

Probably don't even know what working papers are.

I mean, just to be clear, as an accountant, you've got, got, you know, a set of books that are in zero, which is the numbers.

You know, you'll turn over your expenses, your whatever.

But then us accountants effectively put together a load of workbooks which are debit and Credits, They're.

They're effectively.

I don't know, how would you describe them?

Sort of mini reports on various bits, isn't it?

You know, the dry underbelly of the accountant.

And it's absolutely fundamental, you know.

Yeah.

You've got a number that says your debtors are X.

And we.

We got to break down, well, who are all the debtors and who's.

So we put that online, we made work papers.

Sexy.

So, yeah, you know, you had your 0 BAL and it would connect with the document and go, yes, reconcile.

Yeah, it's all about reconciling.

Yes, reconcile.

Faster and better designed and sexier and all of that.

And zero.

And it was kind of built a little bit to be for, like an obvious acquisition and it got on the radar of the leadership.

I woke up one day with a horse's head in the bed and a note saying, you must sell this to us.

So again, yeah, and look out.

We were plugged into their API and everything, so I thought, they're awesome.

But it's very interesting ecosystem, New Zealand.

Actually.

I work a lot with people from Iceland too, which is even smaller than Iceland, but they have that similarity that everything that's built in ice and everything's built in New Zealand.

Because it's a smaller market.

You have to build very broadly dynamic products.

Yeah.

You've got to be like, I'll serve anyone.

They have to work globally.

So we all use New Zealand as the kind of the petri dish to test.

Would you advise others to do that, to go to New Zealand?

Because people don't tend to expand there because it's only 3 million people or.

Whatever, everyone to come there.

We've got our own criteria.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who we live in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I think having some of that attitude is probably quite useful.

So the number eight wire attitude, the sort of.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So I was slightly facetious about the New Zealand as the petri dish, but.

But what we did, essentially, and I did the founder sales, as you do, you hop on the planes and talk to accounting firms.

It was basically kind of Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney and then all those early events just to make sure we had product market fit.

So obviously getting product market fit, if you're an SME, is hugely important.

And.

Once we knew that that worked and I had this kind of, I suppose, family connection with the UK and affinity with the uk, hopped on the plane up here, talked to accounting FIR gave me an excuse to come to London on a junket.

Tax deductible too.

And we Just kind of found that, yeah, people could see it.

And I'm still doing it now, of course, not so much the sales motion, but really trying to.

I mean, I want the profession to step up and do better work that changes lives.

So having that as a driving passion and knowing that.

But, you know, every time we get in front of people, there's one or two more firms that get it and want to run hard and whether they use our tools or not doesn't really matter.

And I had another one at our London event, young lady who'd come out of the big firms and she was running a consultancy practice and she said, well, you know, what you did is what I'm trying to do now in London.

And she was quite entrepreneurial like I was and didn't want to be crunching the numbers.

She wanted to be talking about lives and outcomes.

So, yeah, I think as a takeaway for SMEs, definitely do that kind of product market fit thing.

Don't need to necessarily come to New Zealand.

Product market fit.

I mean, just, you know, just to be slightly pedantic on that.

It's just really taking your.

Taking your product to really understand whether your customers.

You gotta find people who are prepared to pay for it, don't you?

Yeah, definitely.

And we got really good affirmation early at Azerrecon.

As I said, we got some of the big firms kind of signing up and they're still with us 15 years later, despite, you know, there's lots of competing products.

In fact, I remember quite being quite annoyed at the first zero con because two of the five apps that were there, that very first one were reporting apps.

Oh, really?

And it was like, can't you do something else?

Yeah.

So it's always a competitive space.

Didn't I trademark this area?

Yeah, I can't.

Can't just leave it alone.

But yeah, definitely having a bit of that number eight wire mentality, which I suppose in New Zealand, you know, we're so far from anywhere.

Small number of people, we have multiplied slightly.

You know what they say in Iceland, the translation is we fix it.

That's what they said.

Ice.

Yeah, they sort of, you know, we get it sorted.

And I think because we're kind of an egalitarian small society, you do, you do do a bit of everything.

And we talk, we.

I'm not sure if it was on online or before we talked about, you know, you do.

You're the CEO, but you hop on the plane and you'll do a sale, you'll clean the toilet when you Come back, you know, you do whatever you need to do.

So I think there's much more of a.

Just roll up your sleeves and get it done.

Would you have any advice to anyone selling a business in terms of negotiating.

Or talk to your advisor?

I mean that, that's such an important aspect of all you do.

In fact, it's a really interesting thing for me because I'm still doing what I want to do and my board hasn't told me to leave yet.

I'm unemployable too, so I just keep going.

I do have shareholders, so I have to be cognizant of succession and how that looks.

So starting to have those conversations.

You're a young man still there.

Yeah.

I mean that plane flight gets a bit longer every time.

It does get a bit longer.

Winter gets a bit longer every time, doesn't it?

Yeah, you're getting chairs a little bit harder to be.

But yeah, still passionate and still kind of loving the job and what we do.

But yeah, I think have that discussion really early.

What was interesting with our accounting practice was we didn't really set that up in terms of succession and maximizing exit because we kind of leapt to the software thing.

Had to get out almost.

We'd had a few of our best clients exit because they'd sold their business to one of them, sold it to a big accounting firm.

So we kind of weren't.

We hadn't eaten our own dog food in terms of planning for that occurrence.

So I think it'll be something, you know, you're a multi generational accounting practice.

You know, you've got to work out what your succession plan is, how you embed value.

If you're an SME, you've got to not only be thinking about growth and profit and all of those things, but what's the end game?

It's an interesting question.

It's hard when you're 30, isn't it?

You know.

Yeah, I was kind of, I think, 30 when I started my practice.

You don't think about the end?

No, I think that's a little bit more now.

We're a family business, so what we find now is there's different people who want to, you know, work with us or, you know, buy their businesses, you know, and then.

But they're all focused on flipping in five years.

We're a family business, so we're like.

Well, we're not really looking for exits.

It's, you know, if you want to join us, you could join us, but you're stuck in the.

You Know.

Well, family businesses have their own issues.

Oh, we definitely have our own issues.

Family business clients.

And they were always the most fun boardroom meetings.

Yeah.

Oh, gosh, it can be.

Yeah.

But no, definitely in this.

Well, if it's acrimonious, you know, we, we, we, we've.

It happened a little bit between my brother's, but my dad taught me years ago.

And he's, he's right because he watched in that you.

Everyone's got to have their own space.

You can't, you can't have two brothers and sisters or fan like.

Yeah, you'll tear each other apart.

It's horrific.

You know, as long as you've got your own sort of area of expertise.

And at the end of the day, do you want the family to be the casualty of it?

I mean, no.

100%, No.

But.

Yeah, I think.

But this is again, where the advisor comes in.

So if I was a client of yours and, you know, you want him to sit down and talk about goals, you know, it's your moral duty, but also my expectation, hopefully, that you will be talking to me not only about what's right in front of me.

Yeah, yeah.

But what's two years down the track?

Five years?

It's the most interesting question, don't you think?

And people always like, what, five, ten years?

You know, I'm going to get out, I'm going to retire.

Five, 10 years, go like that.

What's going on, John?

Well, five, 10 years are going to retire.

You know, you look at your notes, you know, you do know 10 years ago he said, you know, 10 years, that's it.

And you just said another 10.

So.

Well, the amazing thing for me, and, and, you know, you could say I'm making the same kind of mistake, but I, I'm passionate about what I do, as I was with the accounting practice.

It's only when you kind of, you know, you look back in the mirror sometimes and your father's staring back at you, you think, oh, golly, you know, I've got gray hair now, and what is the plan?

And luckily, I've got a great team.

You know, there'll be a merger or an exit or something, hopefully.

And we're starting to plan towards that and talk to, you know, talk to people about what that might look like.

But for us, it's about how do we continue to be innovative.

So AI has given us.

It's a threat, but it's an opportunity as well.

How do we continue to service the best accounting firms?

And that is continuing to educate them that we not only have this duty but this amazing opportunity to do interesting, useful work.

And why don't we do that?

Surely people are going to be starting so many businesses now.

Surely if you give it a little longer, you're going to meet clients and they're going to have.

It's also about survival.

So at the moment, unfortunately, and ever since COVID really, I mean there's a lot of money being thrown around during COVID so it kind of gave us a false dawn.

But to be honest, it has been.

Advisors should be helping people survive so they can then thrive.

And in New Zealand and Australia and I've seen this in the uk, I've been walking around the towns and the villages and the cities while I've been here.

There's a lot of distress out there, a lot of, a lot of shuttered businesses and there's a lot of anger too.

People ambling around, you know, in the work day.

Well, we were talking about the old work from home this morning, I had to say because we just sort of, you know that there's this sort of myth that's been sold to us all about, oh yeah, you know, I do my best work at home and stuff and it's like, look, you know, I'll admit when I work from home I can get a shitload done.

But I don't know, this, this is sort of it.

Does everyone need to.

It's a double edged sword, isn't it?

And I think, you know, I'm a cricket tragic and I, I've been to a number of cricket matches at the Basin Reserve, wherever it happens to be on annual leave.

Asterisks and the number of people I've bumped into are going.

Oh, you know, you're taking the day off to come to this test match.

Oh no, I'm working from home.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, there's a lot of that.

It is an employee, they're working from.

Home but they got their kids at home.

It's like, yeah, I mean, and I'm.

Running my man to the airport.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm running every zoom you have there.

In the car in the background.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, there's an element at which this sort of.

Yeah, we the, it works for some but not others.

Yeah.

And let's, I mean you also scaled, you've sort of built this global, global team.

Really?

Oh, that's a lot of the gray here.

And people like yourself and Ross at Erie Clark, you know, encourage us to come to the UK and, and, and go global and it's Been.

It's been a wonderful journey and we're still enjoying it.

But, you know, we've got work from home people.

We've got people and, you know, you hire someone in New Jersey or Pennsylvania and you have to comply with all of the stuff there.

So we actually give.

A lot of accountants work all around the world, but.

Yeah.

So what would be your advice to someone building a global team?

Oh, you've really.

You've got to be 110% in.

I've mentored a few in the need.

To do it or you mean.

Well, if, if you're.

If you're even contemplating it.

And this is again, where advice should be taken.

What do you need to do in the territories you want to operate?

And of course, if you're anything software AI, it's going to be global.

There's no point just selling local.

You've got to hop on the planes.

I mean, I've kind of had coffees and dinners and things with CEOs and the ones who aren't in the airport lounges talking to customers prepared to, like, I still am, you know, fly across the world to face to face will struggle even with a team.

It's such a flip, isn't it?

In Covid, people are.

I'm never gonna fly one for a meeting.

And it's like, we're back to a world.

Like, it's an important meeting.

I'm getting on that plane.

I mean, we're, we're, you know, as you can imagine, seeing we've got an ESG reporting to we're a sustainable business.

So I plant a lot of trees in New Zealand.

There's a whole forest, a spotlight forest, essentially native trees, you know, to offset all of my.

Yeah.

Flying around the world and the team, you know, I had team members.

In fact, my UK lead who's also kind of looks after the us she was over in Vegas at a conference for a week.

And so you got to get face to face still, even in this.

Well, imagine too now.

I mean, there's enough of crap of these podcasts you could clone Andy or clone Richard.

I'm sure this is a really scary moment coming that my clients won't even know whether it's me ringing them.

I won't know whether it's when ringing me.

So you're going to get to the point of like, unless I'm in front of them and I give them a produce and get me wrong.

There's so much you can do online and zoom or whatever you happen to be using, but nothing Beats getting in a room either with a group of your clients or face to face.

And I still think the businesses that are succeeding are the ones.

And there's lots of compatriots of mine, we bump into each other at Accountex and then the next kind of roadshow event or who are doing that because they know you can't be absent, you can't be that empty stand at that conference.

No.

You can't hope to have the same connection with a customer if you never meet them.

So if you're going to go global and get the right advice, absolutely.

You've got to have good partners alongside you, whether it's accountants, lawyers, a business advisor.

But get on the plane, you've got.

To be prepared to get the bags under your eyes and the gray hair to.

To get what you want to.

It's brutal travel.

Yeah, it's brutal.

Yeah.

I dread it every trip.

I got, I've got.

I've got to pop to Milan next week, which, you know, on some levels I'm looking forward to it.

It's only Milan, but two bits of advice there.

Build a business where you want to travel.

So I don't go to Mogadishu or.

Big places you want to go.

I better not name too many places because you probably get complaints, you know.

So I go to London and New York and Melbourne and Sydney.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's worse things happen at sea and I've just learned from all of the miles I've done and all the countries I've been to, you've got to carve out time for yourself.

So we shuffled a date on one of our events on this trip.

So it gave me the chance to sneak over to Liverpool, which might not be everyone's first choice of a place.

Great town.

I'm a Beatles.

Oh, you're a Beatles fan, I see.

Oh, me too.

So I went on the Magical Mystery Tour and I stayed.

This is going to be embarrassing now.

At the Hard Days Night hotel, I had George Harrison watching me sleep.

Wow.

What an incredible band.

Yeah.

And it was just like, I can't do that at home.

No, no.

So I'm kind of going tick Paul Simon concert that night took.

Yeah.

It's an interesting thing, carved stuff, London.

But it also fits other brain works.

If you're just like me, me, me and you don't give your brain time to air, you know that, that, that just take taking time.

You've got to look after yourself.

And I think we, us kind of founders and partners and all that, sometimes we're the last people, you know that we say yes.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Foot it in, fit it in.

Fit it in.

Well, I mean, I know I've been preaching about saying no more, but I'm under a bit of pressure to have a couple more meetings before I fly out.

Yeah.

In fact, I might even take my own advice and say no to one of them.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

Well, you've been pretty.

Richard, is there anything else you wanted to chat about?

No, I just think, look, it's, and this is, I suppose with the benefit of a few gray hairs is, you know, we, we only get to do this once.

So if you're in the profession or you're starting your small or medium sized business, you've got to chase the passion.

But don't be afraid to invest in doing it right and not, you know, there's so many things that I learned the hard way that I wish I had invested a bit more in the right advice or whatever.

Find the right advice.

It's like finding a therapist, like finding any of these things.

Find someone who's gonna challenge you.

Yeah.

And there will be someone in your hometown who is an accountant, but who is more than an accountant.

They're a trusted advisor.

So ask around, do some digging.

Don't just settle for compliance, settle for someone that's actually gonna be part of your success story.

Yeah.

Because the real beauty I think of our profession is the independence we have.

As in, as you say, you could be at the table but you're not trying to push anything.

As in, like you're being paid by the hour.

People think, well, you know, that model's dead, whatever.

But the point is, is you're totally independent.

You know, you're, you're, you're, you're not there.

And I, I mean a lot of advisors do this and I think it's such the wrong thing.

I'm never going to tell my client they should do something just because I'm going to earn money out of it.

It's, I'm sure some people, I can't get my head around it.

When people do, it's like, well, don't bother with that, Barry, just do that.

You know, I think you made a really tremendous point Andy, there too around we've got agency to do what we want.

I mean, I've grown to love the accounting profession because I was able to work out the bits I didn't like what I could do with a bit of courage and you know, I was the author of my own destiny.

And Then with the software, you know, again, it was like, okay, how do we, how do we help the whole profession shift right here and do, do useful stuff?

We call it useful.

Yeah.

Spotlight reporting.

And you know, as I've said to the audiences at our advisory edge roadshow, the good news here is that there's nothing holding you back from doing this other than yourself.

If you want to do it, if you want to codify that, why, and chase after it, redesign or better design your firm and then hold yourself accountable to that.

You can do it.

There's thousands of accounting firms around the world doing that.

Brilliant.

Well, we're going to do a little quiz, kind of borrow the.

We've got a paddle for you here.

It says on one side, business on the other.

Okay.

I'm going to name some stuff and you're gonna, we can discuss.

You're gonna hold the paddle up, say business or.

Everyone always forgets to say it.

We're on radio as well as tv.

Yeah.

And then we, we need to decide whether these things are business or.

And, and we could debate.

So all clear.

Yep.

So first one, AI will be better consultants than humans.

Bullshit.

Why?

Because AI, I mean, it will continue to get more clever, but it doesn't have the emotion, empathy, context, backstory that a good advisor has about the people that they're consulting to.

I almost feel like you could give it that.

But it.

Maybe it'll get there, but it's the sort of, the reading, the body language, this face to face bit, the little twitch you say, like you said earlier about you looked uncomfortable when you talked about his wife or something.

It's like, why is he flinching?

Human element.

I mean, we downplay that all the time.

And I appreciate the AI models are moving, but there's still that tech bro kind of false positive.

It's dopamine.

They're trying to hook you.

And how about we do this, we do that.

Here's five more options to your simple question that you just asked.

So I think humans have got.

We've got a little bit.

Yeah.

Get to.

To live for.

Yeah, nice.

Next one.

Most small businesses don't need an accountant at all.

That's.

I think every single business needs.

There'll be some that will just need the compliance stuff, you know, the Holly hairdresser, Colin Cafe.

But.

And an accountant who can do more than be an accountant.

So advisor, whatever word you want to put on it.

Every business deserves that and should have that.

Can they afford it though, when you go to very small businesses.

Yeah.

I mean, again, if they fall into that Holly hairdresser category where they're, you know, they're just making enough to have to file with that return.

Yeah, no, so advisory is not for everyone, but any kind of meaningful business that's scaling and you know, six figure.

Type business, arguably even your Holly hairdresser.

The funny thing is they had an advisor, the advisor said, well, why don't you open another one?

Yeah, so what, you know, as I said, one ones that can scale and have a model where they're not just, they're not just earning a job, you know, they're not having just created a job for themselves.

I mean, I've said up and down the country and actually across the world that if we're accountants and we're not doing a cash flow forecast and a budget for a business client, we're negligent.

Yeah.

They should be looking at the future and we should be the people showing them what the future looks like.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.

Yeah.

It's funny too how sometimes clients can be quite, they need a bit of encouragement, don't they, A bit of belief and it can be quite pessimistic of what they can achieve.

And you show it to them and.

We're not asking the questions why aren't we?

Why aren't we showing them the future?

Yeah, the next five years looks like and what it could look like if.

They change their metrics slightly.

Next one building on someone else's platform is building on borrowed land.

I'm going to stick with bullshit because I don't think you need to necessarily get that lock in.

So I don't think there's any platform that's necessarily the land on which you'd build your foundations.

And what I mean by that is whether it's software or whatever it happens to be, I mean you don't need to be just one general ledger.

You don't need to kind of lock yourself into one way of doing things or one AI model, for example.

So we, you know, we use multiple platforms and things to power what we do.

I think possibly this ship has sailed, isn't it?

In terms of the.

Maybe the old school view, but these days everything's built on everything that's built on everything that's built on everything.

There's just layers to it, isn't it?

Yeah, I think, I mean there are, there's the odd business or accounting firm that's probably doubled down too much on one flavor or one logo and as they either degrade or the prices keep going up and up and up.

They're a little bit trapped.

But I think if you have a bit of a strategy around your stack and your platforms and all of that, it doesn't need to be something you come to regret.

Final one, most accountants make bad advisors.

Richard.

Oh, the most word is a really difficult one.

I'm going to be a little bit more positive on that because I think it is something that can be trained.

It is obviously a bit of a.

What's your.

Why do you want to do it in the first place?

I think most passionate accountants who want to work with small businesses can be good advisors and they need help and support and to have designed their practice properly.

Obviously right tools, right tech, but also what is the customer journey, what's the ideal client profile that they want to service?

So I think most of the accountants I've met over time and of course there's probably a pre selected group coming to things like a spotlight event can definitely be advisors but there are also those accountants who are best suited to crunching and I think arguably too there's.

All types of personality entrepreneurs vary.

There's sort of the ADHD bounce off the wall lot but who are more obvious.

But there's the quarta types.

This is sort of much more analytical.

People say it's sources.

You've got to be a bit careful with that though because bless them I've got lots of really, really good advisor accountants I know who are a little bit.

Tweed jacket, cardigan.

Yeah.

Quiet.

Yeah, yeah.

Square types.

Yeah, nicely.

But they care deeply and they ask the right questions and they actually quietly have sometimes the better advisory.

That's what I'm thinking.

And they might than the ones who bounce off the walls and place because they tend to be all over the place.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's the old, you know, it's a sleeper sell, isn't it?

Like sometimes it's the quiet ones you gotta watch.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's why I say I'm actually quite bullish that most accountants can, if they choose and they want to do it properly, by design, by choice and then hold themselves accountable to that vision can do really good, scalable, profitable advisory.

And you probably have to now with AI they probably have to more than ever.

Yep.

You know the profession, it's not that we're on a knife's edge and that we're all going to be out of business.

I don't believe the doom merchants but there's going to be winners or losers over the next five years.

Yeah.

I think if you've got strong advisory with the bedrock of that human relationship with your best clients.

You're going to be around in five years.

If you don't, good luck.

Who knows?

Brilliant, Richard, final question.

Any one source of information or news that entrepreneurs should be following.

Anything or a book or something that you're like, oh, you've got to go and read that or you've got it.

I think I said earlier I, I read all the books back in the day, but I, you know, life's short.

I now read for pleasure.

There's so many sources, aren't there?

I don't know what it's, what it's.

Any inspiring leaders or anyone.

You're like, oh, I always love who they.

Personally, I love, loved.

And he doesn't seem to have been cancelled yet.

I always saw Richard Branson as an absolute legend and his book Losing My.

Losing My Virginity was fantastic.

And what I love about Sir Richard is he had lots of failures, he had so many businesses, but he had that passion.

He was always trying and he never gave up.

So, yeah, he was definitely someone that.

You're right, you're probably gonna get canceled though, isn't he?

They're probably gonna find out something happened on his island.

Past tense, because he's now kind of bunkered down on Necker island, isn't he?

Yeah, probably waiting for the headline, but you know, really inspiring business story and.

Yeah, that attitude and he's.

And his impact, I mean, wow.

I prefer real stories, though.

So I think rather than necessarily the business manifesto, the Four Hour Work Week or Tipping Point or whatever, I think sometimes actually just reading real stories of entrepreneurs that have been there and done that is powerful.

Brilliant.

Thank you, Richard Francis, for joining us today.

Thank you.

Just fascinating discussion.

And that's been this week's episode of Business Without Vs. And we'll be back again soon.

Ciao, ciao, ciao.